Ross
Ross is the play's principal messenger — present at nearly every major event but rarely shaping any of them. His function is to connect characters across the play's geography and to deliver information that the audience already knows but the character on stage does not. He is the instrument of several of the play's most devastating moments.
Appears In
Biography
Ross is a Scottish nobleman who functions throughout the play as a messenger and go-between — carrying news of the battle to Duncan, informing Macbeth of his new title, visiting Lady Macduff before her murder, and delivering the devastating news of her death to Macduff in England. He is present at almost every turning point of the play without being the agent of any of them.
His moral position is one of the most uncomfortable in Macbeth. He serves whoever holds power — attending Macbeth's court, delivering his messages, departing Lady Macduff's castle moments before the murderers arrive — before eventually joining Malcolm's forces in England. He is not a villain, but he is a survivor, and the play does not flatter the distinction.
It is Ross who must tell Macduff, in the play's most emotionally concentrated scene, that his wife, children, and servants have all been killed. He delays the news as long as he can, and then delivers it in a sentence that destroys a man in real time.
Motivation
Ross is motivated primarily by self-preservation and social loyalty to whichever faction holds power. His eventual defection to Malcolm's cause is less a moral awakening than a practical adjustment to shifting circumstances — though the play does not prevent a more sympathetic reading.
Personality
Ross is a man who knows more than he says and says less than he knows. His talent for delay and circumlocution — visible in the scene with Lady Macduff and most painfully in the scene with Macduff — is not cruelty but a kind of desperate courtesy. He is someone who has learned to carry bad news without becoming it.